VOL. CLXXIV NO.107
CLOUDY HIGH 80 LOW 60
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
Morton Hall reopens for fall
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
DHMC shooting suspect pleads not guilty By JULIAN NATHAN
The Dartmouth Staff
capital renewal prog ram manager Patrick O’Hern. The project was funded by the $8.1 million budget allocated specifically for the project and approved by the Trustees, O’Hern said. The remaining funds will be re-allocated toward future residential operations projects. Morton is at maximum occupancy for fall ter m, according to director of
Officials stated that Travis Frink of Warwick, Rhode Island “admitted” that he shot his mother, Pamela Ferriere, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center on Tuesday in an affidavit released Wednesday. The incident prompted an active shooter alert that evacuated the entire hospital. Frink was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder on Wednesday. The affidavit stated that Pamela Ferriere and Robert Ferriere, Frink’s stepfather, were expecting Frink to visit the hospital. Pamela Ferriere was a patient in the intensive care unit after suffering an aneurysm and was scheduled to be discharged on Friday. A nurse told police that she noticed Frink enter Pamela Ferriere’s room holding a small duffel bag. Frink asked Robert Ferriere for time alone with Pamela Ferriere, and Robert Ferriere left the room. Frink then pulled out a black handgun and pointed it at his mother and fired several shots. The Lebanon police received a 911 call from DHMC at about 1:24 p.m. An autopsy report released by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday concluded that Pamela Ferriere died from blood loss as a result of four gunshot wounds to her chest, abdomen and pelvis. Frink was taken into custody about an hour after the shooting without incident. At approximately 5:20 p.m, Frink waived
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OPINION
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LAUREN KIM/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
The newly reopened Morton Hall now houses 84 students, an increase from the previous 67.
By ALEXANDRA STEINBERG The Dartmouth Staff
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Morton Hall reopened this August after construction was finished on the residence hall following the Oct. 1 fire last year. The redesigned space has amenities the residence formerly did not have, such as an elevator, filtered water fountains, lounge and study spaces on every floor and 84 beds — the prior design
had 67. Morton now has 36 single rooms, four single rooms with private baths, 22 doubles and an apartment for assistant director of residential education for East Wheelock Josiah Proietti. The total project cost $7.5 million — construction costs were $6 million while immediate restoration, smoke and water damage and architect’s fees cost $1.5 million, according to Facilities Operations & Management
President Hanlon responds to rescinding of DACA By ANTHONY ROBLES The Dartmouth Staff
President Donald Trump’s Sept. 5 order to end the Obama-era policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals raised alarm for the College’s students with DACA or undocumented status. That evening, College President Phil Hanlon sent a campus wide email stating that he was “deeply disappointed in President Trump’s decision.” Hanlon had unsuccessfully urged the president “to continue DACA in its current form and to do everything in [his] power to defend it”
in a Sept. 1 letter. “Given that most of these students came to our country as young children, America is the only home they’ve ever known,” Hanlon wrote. “To deny them the opportunity to continue to advance their studies is to deprive our country of the innovation, determination and diversity of human talent that make America the greatest and most prosperous country in the world.” Enacted by former President Barack Obama in 2012, DACA allows undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children to request deferred action
from deportation for two years for work or education. The Dartmouth Coalition for Immigration Reform, Equality and DREAMers issued a letter to the College administration following Trump’s decision asking for certain protections. In the letter, CoFIRED included a list of demands, including the creation of “an action plan on what the College will do in case any of its students are persecuted under deportation orders while on campus” and a commitment that neither Safety and Security nor the College would “cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in
localizing and detaining students.” The group also asked the College to provide mental health resources, funds to cover legal fees and full financial aid for undocumented students. “September 5th felt a little bit like November 9th [election day] all over again,” CoFIRED co-director Jesus Franco ’20 said. “It was sad and it was frustrating, but it allowed me to see that I have privileges that other people don’t and pushed me to use those privileges to make sure that people on this campus are safe, which is what led me and the other CoFIRED members to create the list of SEE DACA PAGE 5
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
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Suspect in DHMC shooting pleads guilty, held without bail following the shooting. “At a time of an active shooter his Miranda rights and told … we did what we were trained to New Hampshire police that he do, which was to go through the had driven to steps necessary the hospital to protect staff o n Tu e s d a y “This is a resilient and patients and f ro m R h o d e organization ... and we collaborate with Island with the authorities,” are in recovery from the intention Mer rens said. of killing his this traumatic event, “ E ve r y e f f o r t mother. was made to and [Dartmouth F r i n k take care of the p l e a d e d n o t Hitchcock Medical patients that are guilty at his Center] will continue under our care.” arraignment M e r r e n s to be strong.” on Wednesday said that on and is being W e d n e s d a y, held without -JOHN KACAVAS, n o r m a l bail. His public operations at the d e f e n d e r DARTMOUTH-HITCHCOCK hospital resumed R e b e c c a MEDICAL CENTER CHIEF and scheduled McKinnon treatments a g r e e d t o LEGAL OFFICER proceeded as prosecutors’ planned. He requests that also explained Frink have no contact with his that the hospital is reviewing stepfather. its security protocols in light of DHMC chief legal officer John Tuesday’s killing and that new Kacavas thanked patients, doctors, measures might restrict the passage nurses and staff for their courage of patients within the hospital. at a press conference at DHMC D H M C emergency on Wednesday afternoon. management coordinator Jim “This is a resilient organization Alexander said that there are no … and we are in recovery from plans to arm hospital security this traumatic officers, event, and n o t i n g [ D a r t m o u t h - “At a time of an active that law H i t c h c o c k shooter ... we did enforcement M e d i c a l what we were trained officials Center] will captured c o n t i n u e t o to do, which was to F r i n k b e s t r o n g , ” go through the steps relatively Kacavas said. quickly and K a c a v a s necessary to protect it would be a l s o t h a n k e d staff and patients and “reactionary” members of law to station collaborate with the enforcement officers with who responded authorities.” guns in a t o Tu e s d a y ’s hospital. emergency T h e a n d o t h e r s -EDWARD MERRENS, College’s from across the DARTMOUTH-HITCHCOCK Twitter account country who encouraged its MEDICAL CENTER CHIEF sent messages students, faculty of support to CLINICAL OFFICER and staff to the hospital. reach out to D H M C its Counseling chief clinical and Human Development office and officer Edward Merrens offered his dean on call if they’d like to talk to a condolences to Pamela Ferriere’s counselor. Safety and Security can help family and praised hospital staff for community members find assistance adhering to emergency procedures 24/7 at (603) 643-4000. FROM DHMC PAGE 1
CORRECTIONS We welcome corrections. If you believe there is a factual error in a story, please email editor@thedartmouth.com for corrections.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
Morton Hall reconstructed after last year’s fire Proietti also said that the reconstructed Morton enables residential education Michael the East Wheelock community to Wooten. The hall’s first and second function better. floors house sophomores, juniors For example, in addition to and seniors, and the third and being used by students and small fourth house freshmen, Morton groups, the new lounges provide undergraduate better spaces for advisor Caroline floor meetings, “There’s a lot of Allen ’20 said. according to A l l e n s t at e d assessment that Proietti and that she likes the Wooten. building’s facilities will happen now Ta n g said i n c l u d i n g t h e that will affect how one potential common and improvement we consider new study spaces, for the residence as well as the spaces or renovated h a l l c o u l d b e spacious size of spaces.” the inclusion of her room and the bathrooms within skylights within it. each room, an B i l l T a n g -MICHAEL WOOTEN, amenity he called ’20, a UGA on a “luxury.” DIRECTOR OF Morton’s second P r o i e t t i floor, said he was RESIDENTIAL explained that the e x c i t e d a b o u t EDUCATION team designing t h e r e n ov a t e d Morton decided residence hall. not to include Ta n g c i t e d private bathrooms the glass walls within each room encasing the study spaces as his because of issues related to space favorite element of his residence hall and difficulty cleaning bathrooms. because they boost his productivity. Prioritizing more singles and Proietti said he was happy that common spaces in the building students are using the lounge required more square footage than spaces. in the previous design, which made “The most pleasurable moments including private bathrooms in I’ve had are walking in and out each room a challenge. Moreover, of the lobby and seeing students residents frequently forgot to studying in those spaces that we remove their personal belongings were so intentional about making,” from bathroom counters, thus Proietti said. making it difficult for custodians to FROM MORTON PAGE 1
clean the bathrooms, Proietti said. forward to hearing feedback on the Proietti added that the only design of the space from students, complaints he has heard from programming and housing requests. students on the building are that “There’s a lot of assessment that the windows cannot be opened will happen now that will affect completely and that the fire doors how we consider new spaces or in the first floor hallway must renovated spaces,” Wooten said. remain closed. Prior to the T hese designs fire, the office of “The most are due to safety re s i d e n t i a l l i f e r e g u l a t i o n s , pleasurable and FO&M were Proietti said. already planning moments I’ve had Wooten said to renovate he believes that are walking in and Morton, O’Hern the new design out of the lobby said. The plans is a better mix of updating and seeing students included public space, such the heating and as small nooks studying in those cooling systems, and lounges, and spaces that we bathrooms and p r i vat e s p a c e, fire alarm systems. including more were so intentional Residential life s i n g l e r o o m s . about making.” and FO&M were The increase working with in public space Harriman, an and the number -JOSIAH PROIETTI, architecture firm of single rooms EAST WHEELOCK headquartered in was possible Maine, in summer by eliminating ASSISTANT DIRECTOR and early fall 2016 the suite-style OF RESIDENTIAL on ameliorating living that was these issues. EDUCATION previously used After the in Morton. fire, a specialty East Wheelock demolition house professor contractor was Sergi Elizalde said he is glad that hired to mitigate smoke and water all the East Wheelock students are damage in Morton, O’Hern said. now all in East Wheelock residence After evaluating and deciding that halls, since the Morton residents Morton would not be ready for were relocated across campus after spring 2017 term occupancy, the the fire. College realized it would be more Wooten said he was looking cost-effective to redesign the space
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rather than reconstruct it to match the previous design. The decision to redesign came from the offices of residential operations, FO&M, senior administrators, the Provost and residential life, O’Hern said. A team of approximately 10 representatives from Harriman worked on the Morton project, including architects and engineers, according to Harriman architect and project manager Sharon Ames who worked on Morton with the College. Although the interior of Morton was changed entirely during construction, the exterior is the same from before the fire, which provided architectural challenges, Ames said. Ames said the condition of the exterior wall of the building was not ideal for the project and adjustments were made, such as sistering, which involves reinforcing the existing structure with additional materials. “It was not as robust a structure as we would have hoped,” Ames said. “But we augmented the structure to accommodate for the new floor levels that we were putting in and the elevator.” Although the fire alarm systems and air ventilation systems have been updated, the result of the Oct. 1 fire would have been the same in the new building, even with the new technology, because the fire’s place of origin was on the roof, O’Hern said.
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THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
DARTMOUTHEVENTS TODAY
12:15 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.
Seminar: “Paper Cuts: How Reporting Resources Affect Political News Coverage,” with postdoctoral fellow Erik Peterson, Silsby Hall 119
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Lecture: “Free Speech on College Campuses,” with University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone, Haldeman 41 (Kreindler Conference Center)
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Lecture: “Envisioning Post-Emancipation Racial Landscapes in Colombia,” with State University of New York at Binghamton professor Nancy Appelbaum, Carson L02
TOMORROW
3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Colloquium: “Mathematics and its Rigors,” with Brown University professor Joan Richards, Kemeny Hall 007
7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Film: “The Shape of Water,” directed by Guillermo del Toro, Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts
8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Performance Art: “Antigone in Ferguson,” Moore Theater, Hopkins Center for the Arts
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PAGE 5
CoFIRED calls on College for statement of support FROM DACA PAGE 1
demands that we released.” According to Franco, he and other members of CoFIRED had previously discussed a plan to support students in the case of DACA’s repeal. Once the program was rescinded, the organization came together to write the letter and included its list of demands. “Dartmouth prides itself on a diverse student body, so it is only right that it protects those students who help it achieve this goal ... Dartmouth has taken steps to achieve inclusivity and diversity, but it is time to make even greater strides,” the letter stated. As CoFIRED awaits a response from Hanlon, Franco said he is hopeful that the demands would be met soon. He added that the organization was working to release as much information on the issue as possible while also trying to connect students with other resources on campus. CoFIRED previously petitioned the administration on Nov. 16, 2016, shortly after Trump won the election. The petition received over 1,400 signatures from students, faculty and staff after one day of its release. Similar to CoFIRED’s Sept. 5 letter, the petition called on the Dartmouth administration to continue its efforts to “actively support undocumented
students” by releasing a statement Office of Visa and Immigration “declaring [Dartmouth] a sanctuary Services director Susan Ellison college.” said that her H a n l o n “It’s really office maintains responded to a resource web disappointing that the petition page on DACA in a campus- this decision came d e s i g n e d fo r wide email on down the way it did students, staff Nov. 18, 2016 a n d f a c u l t y. that reaffirmed beacuse ... some The web page the College’s early communication includes several support for its resources, such as coming out from the undocumented a link to a network s t u d e n t s bu t Trump administration of pro bono and did not declare seemed to give low cost legal the College services. She a s a n c t u a r y everyone the added that other campus. In the impression that he offices such as email, Hanlon Affairs, was going to leave the Student wrote that Dick’s House D a r t m o u t h DACA program alone.” and Financial “has for years Aid also provide been a strong support for supporter of the -SUSAN ELLISON, students affected Deferred Action OFFICE OF VISA AND by the decision. for Childhood IMMIGRATION SERVICES Arrivals policy.” “ I t ’s re a l l y He also signed DIRECTOR disappointing a Nov. 21, 2016 that this decision letter entitled came down the “Statement in Support of the Deferred way it did because ... some early Action for Childhood Arrivals communication coming out from the Program and our Undocumented Trump administration seemed to give Immigrant Students,” which was everyone the impression that he was cosigned by over 600 other university going to leave the DACA program presidents. alone,” Ellison said. “Our office is
coordinating to offer legal services to DACA students so that they can have access to qualified attorneys to discuss DACA or potentially look at other options for immigration relief. Ellison said that in the past her office has offered students the opportunity to speak with attorneys to ask questions regarding DACA. She added that before DACA was enacted, OVIS organized sessions with senior administrators on campus with the goal of increasing awareness about the “challenges faced by undocumented students.” Unlike the University of California system, which filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Sept. 8 for rescinding DACA, Ellison said that she was unaware of any College plans to file a similar lawsuit. However, she noted that the College has previously demonstrated its support for DACA through the filing of amicus briefs, most notably in March 2016, when the College filed a brief encouraging the expansion of the policy. “There’s going to be efforts to work with our congressional delegation and others to find, to support a legislative decision to this,” Ellison said. “Understandably, there is a lot of anxiety and the hope is that things will happen pretty quickly on the legislative front.” Trump’s decision to repeal DACA
also comes amidst an increase in Customs and Border Protection agents conducting inspections in New Hampshire and Vermont. Ellison said that in June and August, CBP agents boarded Greyhound buses in White River Junction, Vermont and asked travelers to show evidence of their lawful status in the United States. Additionally, a checkpoint was set up on Interstate 93 in Woodstock, N.H. during the last weekend in August that resulted in detainment of 25 undocumented immigrants, according to WMUR. According to the OVIS website, “CBP claims authority to operate these checks within 100 miles of the U.S. Canadian border.” “I am actually going to be going to a meeting soon with CBP just to understand a little bit better about these activities and what’s happening,” Ellison said. “From what I understand, it’s a practice that they’ve done in the past, but not in quite a while. It doesn’t seem to be on a regular or scheduled basis.” In r e g a r d s t o l o c a l l a w enforcement, Grafton County Sheriff Douglas Dutile said that his office does not have the jurisdiction to enforce federal law. He added that state police and county sheriffs do not have any statuary authority to enforce federal law.
STAFF COLUMNIST TYLER MALBREAUX ’20
STAFF COLUMNIST WILLIAM SANDLUND ’18
On Friendship
Critical Information
Modern social media detracts from true friendship. Michel de Montaigne is widely considered to be the first modern essayist. “The Essais,” which in Middle French means “attempts” or “trials,” were the products of Montaigne’s sometimes messy ruminations. He freely admitted these were abundant with inconsistencies and contradictions. However, now compiled in books well over 1,000 pages long, “The Essais” is one of the most significant contributions to Western thought. Montaigne lived during an age of religious violence in France. The Protestant Reformation had firmly taken hold. By the early 1550s, the country was well on its way to a civil war that claimed the lives of millions. Living in his chateau near Bordeaux, Montaigne locked himself in reclusion for his last decade of life. Surrounded by political chaos and in his characteristic equanimity, suggested that friendship was most important to fostering value in society. The capacity to wholly confide in another expressed the deepest kind of love, a love that transformed an assembly of mere citizens into a community of lovers. Souls of friends were “so universal a mixture, that there is no more sign of the seam by which they were first conjoined,” he wrote. To Montaigne, friendship meant more than acquaintance, and it was at least as valuable as romantic partnerships. Today, such a comparison would be considered hyperbole. But why did our philosophical forefathers see friendship so differently? Aristotle, in his “Nicomachean Ethics,” said friendship requires “time and intimacy” that most men lack the desire to cultivate. Cicero wrote “Friendship transcends everything else; it throws a brilliant gleam of hope over the future and banishes despondency.” Such high aspirations for friendship seem to require not only commitment but also intense focus. That focus blurs once you account for one thousand Facebook “friends,” of which you might have met only a quarter. I will avoid lambasting social media in its entirety as it is not solely responsible for the denigration of a friendship’s value. As William Deresiewicz noted in an article published a few years ago, friendship in its modern incarnation is the product of a multicultural process that began at least two centuries ago. The article is complex and should be read in its entirety, but my interest in Deresiewicz’s narrative starts in the late 1960s.
He attributes the development of the “friendship circle” — as opposed to more personal, one-on-one relationships — to 1960s counterculture. These circles acted as “redoubt[s] of moral resistance,” sheltering young people from “normative pressure” and “social ideals.” By the early 2000s, the friendship circle entered a new generation. The invention of Myspace and other platforms made self-promotion fashionable. No matter how trendy you were or what kind of music, food or television shows you liked, your coolness was now a function of followers, likes and retweets. Therefore, self-promotion necessarily meant promoting popularity — showing off how many “friends” you had. That is the point at which we find ourselves. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, to name a few, have turned smartphone owners into branding experts. Each post is an entry for a competition with millions of contestants, struggling to gain likes in a marketplace that often rewards vanity. Friendship’s most recent changes would disturb Montaigne. He believed a person could have only one true friend, because multiple friends would serve only to devolve into a game of picking favorites. Montaigne went mad after his longtime friend, Étienne de La Boétie, died in 1563. In a very literal way, Boétie’s death was also Montaigne’s death. The rest of his life was spent in reclusion. Writing “The Essais,” especially in the section “On Friendship,” he made frequent reference to his times with Boétie, immortalizing him. Of the source of their friendship, Montaigne wrote, “because it was he, because it was I.” Our sense of friendship should be more than just indicators of popularity on social media. Like most metrics, numbers of friends and followers alone are inept at explaining our whole self. On a broader level, it is important that we think of the broader role friendship plays in creating a community. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude.” It is so that by getting to know others better, we become better ourselves. Montaigne, through his friendship with Boétie, realized a part of himself he would not have discovered otherwise. Their souls were seamlessly connected. They were not mere complements to each other; they helped to define each other. Because it was him. Because it was he.
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ISSUE
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
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NEWS EDITOR: Peter Charalambous
SUBMISSIONS: We welcome letters and guest columns. All submissions must include the author’s name and affiliation with Dartmouth College, and should not exceed 250 words for letters or 700 words for columns. The Dartmouth reserves the right to edit all material before publication. All material submitted becomes property of The Dartmouth. Please email submissions to editor@thedartmouth.com.
China reminds us of the value of searching for objective truth. I recently returned from three months studying and interning in Beijing. I noticed something unsettling when I returned to America: I had stopped Googling things. When I had a question, I simply let it formulate and then vanish. In China, I did not have a VPN on my phone and relying on Bing is like being led by a blind guide through the ill-lit cave of the Internet. It once returned a WikiHow page on how to raise a child when I looked up some song lyrics. And so I stopped trying to find things out. Having grown up in Singapore, I was less bothered than many Americans by governments limiting personal freedoms. I thought the relationship between individuals and states was flexible, and while freedom is an important ideal, it was just that — an ideal, subject to the practicalities, realities and exigencies of statecraft. Travel should broaden perspectives. Being in Beijing, perhaps the world’s most concentrated center of political power (note: concentrated), did just that. I began to realize my belief in authoritarianism as morally negotiable was partly a contrarian pose. When I came to America for college, I instinctively wanted to challenge people’s reaction to what they thought of life in Singapore, because many Americans have a uniquely unquestioning reverence for “liberty.” I do not think I was wrong to challenge the idea of pure and unadulterated freedom. No such thing exists. Singapore is more “free” than China and less so than the United States. Many Chinese citizens I talked to tellingly thought of Singapore as a liberal democracy. Intellectually, I am still tempted by the cultural relativism implicit in China and Singapore’s respective rejection and questioning of western democratic values. But I cannot truly reconcile this stance with my own experiences over the past months. In particular, information control and censorship under the Chinese Communist Party is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate and subdue China’s population. There is no alternative ideal of statecraft being explored in such a practice beyond the maintenance of absolute power. The most frightening thing about their policies is how effective such techniques can be in the 21st century. Technology has made it easier than ever to manipulate humans, who have become like docile animals grazing on pastures of digitized information. You cannot use Google, YouTube, Facebook, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal in China, to name a few sites a reader of this column would probably miss. That is frustrating, but it is in many ways bearable. What I could not stomach was when I started to read Chinese publications such as the People’s Daily or when I tried watching China Central Television. These news outlets are no more than mouthpieces of the government promoting whatever policy has been settled on behind the impregnable red walls of Zhongnanhai. I began to realize the battle for control of information in China is fought on two fronts. The state must first limit alternative viewpoints, then saturate the environment with its own perspective. I found the second element particularly maddening, partly because I could not bear the thought of a casual commuter being exposed to such inane reading material on the
morning bus. The saddening realization is how effective these methods are at achieving their aims. Many of my young Chinese friends, although highly educated, were nationalistic to a surprising degree, essentially regurgitating the party’s stance on issues such as the South China Sea or the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense missile program. Some readers might point out that many Americans are unquestioning in their support of our foreign expeditions, often seen as acts of bullying by nations such as China. That is true, but there are also many Americans vocally critical of our government. What distinguishes democracies is disagreement; out of discourse comes a closer approximation of the truth. Many basic truths are not accessible in China. The way we like to talk about access to clean drinking water is how we should think of being able to find out a simple fact. For instance, when conducting research during my internship, I needed to determine the total number of dams and their total electrical output in China. The information on a government site was outdated, so I called the relevant government agency, only to be told I would have to pay for more recent records. This may seem harmless, but the obfuscation of the truth with certain ends in mind permeates every aspect of society. My Chinese professor only found out about the death of dissident Liu Xiaobo two weeks later when I mentioned it in class. The articles I could read when not using a VPN called him a criminal and puppet of the west. When I finally read his obituary in The New York Times, I started to cry. At the heart of my sadness was a sense of the unfairness, the pettiness of it all. That pettiness belies a deep insecurity harbored by the Communist Party. Fear starts with rulers and trickles down to the ruled. As President Xi Jinping consolidates political power in the run-up to the 19th National Congress, he is also consolidating China’s historical narrative. Besides the Communist Party’s recent tussle with Cambridge University Press over suppressing academic articles that touch on subjects such as Tibet and the Tiananmen Square massacre, a more chilling development has surfaced. Glenn Tiffert recently discovered that Chinese authorities are quietly deleting journal articles from the 1950s, now mostly online, with ease. Anything that challenges the orthodoxy promoted by Xi is simply erased with a few keystrokes. I am left wondering — the Internet was supposed to make all of this better. It was supposed to equalize information and give everyone access to knowledge. Instead, it has gotten easier to channel masses of people into certain modes of thinking. It is hard enough to break out of these channels in the West, where algorithms largely determine what we see. But in China, only a small number of educated people really care enough to look beyond the Great Firewall. And even that has become more difficult with China’s recent crackdown on VPNs. Critical thinking in the 21st century has gotten that much harder. There may not be such a thing as objective truth; however, we must at least preserve it as an ideal if we want to make our messy modern world work.
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THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
GUEST COLUMNIST JESSE HEUSSNER ’15
STAFF COLUMNIST CLARA CHIN ’19
Antifa is the Wrong Answer
Beyond Title IX
Antifa’s violence delegitimizes its views and helps its opponents.
If the enemy of our enemy is supposed to be our friend, what happens when this friend becomes increasingly indistinguishable from the common adversary we seek to delegitimize? This was a question worth asking about the Antifa movement, short for “anti-fascist action,” months ago and is now a question that the Dartmouth community, particularly its faculty, seem to be conveniently neglecting. The infighting surrounding visiting lecturer Mark Bray’s public defense of Antifa and College President Phil Hanlon’s subsequent denunciation of those remarks has been about process. Should the College have waited to speak to Bray before making a public statement? Was it right that Hanlon publicly commented at all? Shouldn’t faculty members be able to speak their mind on topics they study, even if the positions they hold potentially damage the reputation of the College? These questions, while relevant, have distracted us from the efficacy and substance of Bray’s argument. And Bray’s substance is defective: His defense of the self-titled “anti-fascist” group tacitly endorses political violence and mischaracterizes the history of resistance movements through a series of ahistorical rationalizations. Bray, who recently released a book entitled “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” and made waves for his support of Antifa on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and in a column for the Washington Post, acknowledged that Antifa differentiates itself from liberal, anti-racists by its “willingness to physically defend themselves and others from white supremacist violence” and its readiness to “preemptively shut down fascist organizing efforts before they turn deadly.” In this context, Bray essentially argues that the “ends” can always justify the “means,” just so long as the “ends” relate to the suppression of fascism, and that “fascism” is defined by Antifa and Antifa alone. Although the underpinnings of these beliefs must have been grounded in some sense of morality — opposing evil is obviously good — Bray’s defense of Antifa obfuscates the facts by insisting that the group acts only in collective self-defense and obscures history by suggesting that this group, in 2017, is congruous to people who opposed fascism during the rise of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. He also introduces an ethical slippery slope that is nearly impossible to reconcile and might embolden alt-right groups who otherwise would not have a leg upon which to stand. Bray’s term, “collective self-defense,” is a euphemism for preemptive violence. It is intellectually dishonest to imply that an unremitting pattern of violent conduct is somehow irreproachable, even if the targets of these combative attacks express abhorrent ideas. Antifa supporters attend rallies in militant uniforms and masks with clubs in hand precisely because the group knows that it is openly engaging in illegal behavior. Citizens should be willing to physically defend themselves from white supremacist violence; it is an entirely different matter to suggest that groups have the right to seek out and physically assault people with disgraceful views. Antifa has even gone a step further: It has thrown rocks, feces and urine at police officers, knocked out reporters and instigated fighting when its opponents have been congregating nonviolently. Although many
on the far left have ignored this out of political expediency, the moral high ground belongs to those who behave in a manner society ought to emulate. Antifa does not meet this standard. But what if this more forceful, violent version of resistance could have stopped the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s? Bray posits that Antifa’s militant tact is necessary, so as not to let fascism grow. But these tactics may actually do just the opposite; in “The Coming of the Third Reich,” Richard Evans acknowledged that armed violence from communists in the Weimar Republic fueled the polarization of public sentiment and vitalized the actions of fascists. Bray creates a false binary that suggests that anything that opposes fascism is inherently moral. Yet many Antifa members profess to be communists, a truth that is difficult to square with the fact that repressive, totalitarian communist regimes murdered millions of civilians all over the world during the same century that saw the rise of fascism. Opposition to a pernicious ideology is much less productive when that opposition comes from a place of blind oblivion. If fascism is characterized by the forcible suppression of an identified opposition, should Antifa be throwing rocks at itself ? Its broad goal — obstructing organizing efforts by people the group self-selects as fascists, coupled with its tactics, by any means necessary — renders Antifa ethically ineffectual. And what happens when Antifa’s opponents widen in scope to include many who are themselves opposed to fascism? Antifa does not just oppose fascism; it has outwardly stated its fierce opposition to capitalism and to organized government. The group’s ire will not just be saved for Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos; it may soon be unleashed on anyone who doesn’t conform to Antifa’s conception of “good.” It is, of course, vitally important to protect this common good. Remnants of Nazism and white supremacy persist. Ugly fringe groups continue to occupy space closer and closer to the mainstream. And the stench emanating from the alt-right reeks. The sentiment is worth repeating: Anyone drawing moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and the counter-protesters at Charlottesville has engaged in cynical intellectual chicanery. That doesn’t make it any less devious to suggest that Antifa is this country’s new moral harbinger. It is immoral to club people to the ground. It is immoral to hurl bottles of urine at cops. Bray’s forwarded arguments, which absolve Antifa of these actions and openly pardon the use of violence, make it far more difficult to confront the bigotry and chauvinism that has once again taken hold in America. Protests and political activism are no strangers to Dartmouth — thank goodness. But if the student body were to heed the advice of Bray, who seems to fetishize and romanticize anarchism, the institution would be reduced to a state of fruitless chaos. The sane voices of resistance would be lost. Vile ideas would reign, just those from the other side. Jesse Heussner is a member of the Class of 2015. The Dartmouth welcomes guest columns. We request that guest columns be the original work of the submitter. Submissions may be sent to both opinion@thedartmouth. com and editor@thedartmouth.com. Submissions will receive a response within three business days.
Title IX should be preserved, but its limitations must be made clear. Betsy DeVos’ changes to the sexual assault portion of Title IX is understood by many as a deterioration of an already flawed system for survivors of sexual trauma on college campuses. This legislative action, announced last week, follows critiques of Title IX from men’s rights activists and from lawyers of students who felt they had been wrongly accused. Considering President Donald Trump’s administration’s track record with women, there is no question that the assessment is true. While it is easy to conceive of the problems with Title IX as an issue limited to the Trump administration, it is actually the culmination of issues inherent to legal or procedural processes relating to sexual assault. Of course, perpetrators of sexual assault should be held accountable for their actions, but Title IX and other judicial bodies are not (and will never be) equipped to combat many aspects of sexual trauma and its aftermath. In order to help victims of both “small-scale” and “large-scale” sexual trauma cope, we must realize that Title IX, with or without DeVos’ recent changes, is not enough. One priority should be ensuring that Title IX remains intact, but we should also realize that Title IX is just one piece of a larger puzzle in creating a safe campus culture for survivors of various types of trauma. Title IX uses the legal system to address sexual assault. Judicial action focuses on the perpetrator instead of the victim and will not necessarily provide closure for the victim. Yet the focus of the national conversation on the judicial action portion of Title IX relies on the assumption that punishing those guilty of sexual assault provides healing for the perpetrators. For some, the legal system is enough. Knowing that a perpetrator must face consequences for their actions might help some rest easy, especially with the knowledge that the perpetrator might be less likely to assault other people. But for many victims, the trauma still persists; for others, there might not even be a legal solution to their particular trauma. Another major criticism of Title IX is what some consider an inability to impose due process. Put simply, the legal system imposes a binary in which an act can only be sexual assault or not sexual assault — by calling an action sexual assault, someone must be punished. The few instances in which victims supposedly “exaggerate” the actions of the accused might be a result of this. By not calling an incident sexual assault, the victim goes unheard; by calling an incident sexual assault, the punishment may be considered too harsh. This dichotomy thus ignores the ambiguity and conflict of sexuality, especially for college students. Relying so heavily on a system like Title IX means that those who suffer from trauma must put blame on someone in order to deal with their trauma. This results in three problematic scenarios — victims who want to deal with sexual trauma that cannot be pinpointed on one person; victims who take their trauma to judicial bodies under Title IX and do not win their cases, thus not receiving closure; or in rare cases victims “exaggerating” the timeline of a case, resulting in the unfair blame of someone who did not commit a crime. The legal system deals with the literal, not the psychological. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “Sexual harassment can qualify as discrimination under Title IX if it is
‘so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim’s access to an educational opportunity or benefit.’” This might include extreme examples such as the Brock Turner case (in which, I might add, the perpetrator did not spend much time in jail). But Title IX cannot grapple with the fact that sexual trauma is not always objective. There are so many other variables that influence whether or not a person understands an event to be traumatic — mental health, socioeconomic or familial contexts, exposure to past traumas and sexual experience. A rape apologist would take this fact as an example of the way in which a victim might impose unfair blame upon the accused. Instead, the inherent subjectivity of what might be constituted as sexual trauma indicates that victims need even more resources than just Title IX. These limits are made clear when looking at one major criticism of Title IX, that survivors might not tell the truth, or that the victim’s memory is fraught or reconstructed ex post facto. These concerns are addressed and summarized in a piece by Emily Yoffe in The Atlantic. In most cases, people who are victims of sexual assault have difficulty proving assault; because many cases go unreported until an average of 11 months later, they often turn into “he said, she said” battles. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to understand “truth” as it stands in the law. A critic of Title IX may find it difficult to prove that the accused is innocent, since the victim will blame the accused; a victim may find it difficult to prove that someone found innocent is actually guilty, since that person would insist upon their innocence. While the truth may only be known between those two parties, it is the psychic truth of the victim that ultimately matters. This is complicated by the fact that a trauma survivor’s psychic truth may be affected by the processes the individual must go through, such as being placed under a microscope, reliving sexual trauma and dealing with the perpetrator either directly or indirectly. If victims construct a “false” narrative or exaggerate facts under the stress of judicial action and Title IX procedures, this is often a response to their psychic truth as they try to articulate the less understandable subjective trauma that they experience from emotional impact to literal events. Yet judicial action does not heed to the singularity of experience but forces the victim to submit to yet another form of power, one that is legal rather than sexual. Even without the changes that DeVos has imposed, Title IX is only equipped to help survivors of what the legal and educational systems consider trauma. The national conversation following Title IX’s new restriction highlights the fact that, even intact, Title IX can only provide closure for some victims and reduces sexual trauma to a victim-perpetrator dichotomy that can be harmful to both parties involve. Fortunately, there are resources at Dartmouth equipped to provide healing that do not rely on such structures of power; such resources include counseling, student organizations such as SAPA and initiatives in the arts like galleries and Voices. But with Title IX in danger, we must work hard to preserve these grassroots forms of healing so survivors can have something to fall back on.
THE DARTMOUTH ARTS
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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
H and Lodj Croos pull off performances under time crunch By KYLEE SIBILIA
The Dartmouth Staff
It’s awkward. People are arguing. You’re looking around, unsure of whether or not this is supposed to be happening. Everyone sitting around you looks just as confused. Upperclassmen in crazy outfits shout about dehydration or kitchen crises, and you have no idea what to think. And then they all burst into song. One of the most memorable parts of a Dartmouth First-Year trip is the chaotic beauty of the shows put on by H Croo in Sarner Underground and by Lodj Croo at the McLane Family Lodge at the Dartmouth Skiway. By the time bright-eyed freshmen and their trip leaders see these performances, student performers rehearse and polish the pieces to near perfection. The incubation period for these shows is extremely rapid. H Croo spends its first day on campus brainstorming songs to parody, the second day writing lyrics and the third day revising and choreographing. After that comes the dress rehearsal and subsequently the final shows.
Lodj Croo also spent about two days on brainstorming and lyric writing, in addition to a half day on choreography. Alana Bernys ’20, a member of this summer’s H Croo, explained how it was possible for the process to happen so quickly. It was a very collaborative experience,” Bernys said. “It was very free-flowing, and everybody worked on what they felt like working on at the time. In terms of choreography, it was a similar process, but maybe a couple more people took a more direct role.” B e r ny s s a i d t h a t s e ve r a l members decided to take unofficial ownership over certain songs. H Croo’s songs focused on a range of key topics like safety, rules and preparation for trips. Lodj Croo’s songs, on the other hand, had to be about a course or dish in the meal. With such a rushed learning process, one would expect it to be difficult for Croolings to remember lyrics and choreography. However, Jake Klein ’20, a member of this summer’s Lodj Croo, explained that the collaborative nature of the experience made the memorization relatively easy.
“I remember thinking, ‘Ok now I have to sit down and memorize it,’” Klein said. “But we had already been working with it for so long that we basically already knew it, which was pretty cool.” Sophie Smith ’20, another member of Lodj Croo, emphasized the lighthearted nature of the learning process. “We’d be doing kitchen prep and blasting the show music in the kitchen and just screaming the lyrics and trying to memorize them and just going over them again and again,” Smith said. Despite the perfor mancebased aspects of the Croos, most Croolings have little to no singing or dancing experience before they join. More important than technical ability is the ability to let go and have fun during the shows. “I was nervous about it,” Smith said. “It just kind of happens naturally, like the dancing we do isn’t even real dancing. It’s just kind of like you keep moving and have fun.” Both H Croo and Lodj Croo performed their respective shows once during every Trips section, in addition to all their other
CHRISTIAN UNION OPENS DOORS FOR OPEN HOUSE
LAUREN KIM/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
Christian Union at Dartmouth was one of many groups hosting first-year outreach events on Wednesday.
responsibilities coordinating the logistics of the trips program. The Croos are busy from morning until night, which doesn’t leave much downtime for members. H Croo’s main sleeping time is from midnight to 5 a.m., and Lodj Croolings went to bed anywhere between midnight and 2 a.m. and woke up between 6:30 and 8:30 a.m. Despite this lack of sleep, the Croolings were still able to maintain enthusiasm. Simon Ellis ’20, a member of H Croo, said keeping spirits up was easier than people might think. “I thought it was going to be really difficult, but what kept me going was the new energy of each section,” Ellis said. “It’s a really interesting relationship of how much energy you give the trippees and how much they give back. Like if they’re really excited to be there, we’re going to be really excited, and then they get even more excited.” One aspect of the shows that was different this year was the fact that Lodj Croo performed at the McClane Family Lodge instead of the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. This change brought increased capacity
in the dining room, meaning that the Lodj Croo only had to perform one dinner show instead of the traditional two. That granted them the flexibility to add a finale song to the lineup. Croolings also had a lot more space to move and created more ambitious choreography. The artistic process involved bonded the Croos not just with each other, but with the incoming class of freshmen they were tasked with welcoming to Dartmouth. “I knew two people on H Croo before,” Ellis said. “I had never even seen most of them before, and now we’re all super close. I was actually talking to a trippee in Foco the other day who saw us all eating dinner together and was like, ‘Oh it’s so great to see you guys are friends in real life!’” “Knowing 21s and having that — in that I was on Lodj Croo and that I’d met them — and possibly having other freshmen not go through a feeling of isolation and loneliness is pretty fulfilling,” Klein said. “I’m having lunch with a lot of them this week.” Bernys is a member of The Dartmouth Staff.
VENDORS PREPARE FALL WARES
LAUREN KIM/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
In the first week of classes, students venture to the Farmers’ Market on the Green.